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Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Kenya's War On Terror Is No Solution To Insecurity

The past two weeks have been
pretty horrid for President Uhuru Kenyatta. His decision, after Al Shabaab
terrorists last weekend massacred 28 Kenyans in the north-eastern town of
Mandera, not to cut short his official visit to the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand
Prix, backfired terribly. And when he did eventually return to face criticism
for his administration’s seeming disregard for national security issues, his speech blaming the public for rising insecurity (and a mother for the rape
of her baby) did not go down well.

Then on Tuesday morning, despite
his deputy’s assurances that nearly 100 terrorists, including those who
committed the bus attack, had been killed and their camp just across the border
destroyed, Kenyans woke up to news of yet another massacre in the same area. This
time, the victims were 36 quarry workers, killed in remarkably similar
circumstances.

With public outrage and
calls for heads, including his, to roll, reaching a crescendo, President
Kenyatta finally decided to sacrifice
the two people who, more than any other, were considered responsible for the
security debacle. He prevailed upon the Inspector General of Police, David
Kimaiyo, to resign and effectively fired his Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph
ole Lenku.

For the moment, this seems
to have sated the anger. However, there are more battles on the horizon and it
is important that Kenyans do not lose focus.

In the Barry Levinson movie,
Wag the Dog, a top-notch spin doctor, is brought in to take the public's
attention away from a potentially disastrous presidential sex scandal just days
to the election This is achieved by hiring a Hollywood film producer to
construct a fake war withAlbania. However, the fiction can
only last for so long and, to keep the public eye focused away from scandal,
has to be continually embellished till the election is won.

Over the last two years,
Kenyatta has implemented his own version of this script. In the run up to the 2013
election, with an unsavoury charge of abetting and financing the mass murder of
their countrymen hanging over his and his running mate’s heads, his hired guns
manufactured a war. They latched on ill-advised warnings about the advisability
of electing politicians indicted by the International Criminal Court, accusing
the West of trying to dictate the outcome of the election. The duo rode the
subsequent wave of faux-patriotism all the way into power (aided by suspiciously
incompetent electoral commission and Supreme Court).

Once ensconced in State
House, the duo have continued to embellish the tale, mixing both real and
imagined fears -from the ICC to Western imperialism to Al Shabaab- to create an cocktail of fear and an
environment where questioning their motives or peering too closely is seen as a
veritable act of treason.

On Tuesday, the President
came out once again to remind us that Kenya is at war with terror. In a speech reminiscent of George Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress
following the 9/11 attacks, Kenyatta declared that “a time has come for each
and every one of us to decide and choose. Are you on the side of an open, free,
democratic Kenya which respects the rule of law, sanctity of life and freedom
of worship, or do you stand with repressive, intolerant and murderous
extremists?” Bush had put it more succinctly, “either you are with us or with
the terrorists.”

Now, it is understandable
why the Global War on Terror trope is so appealing to an administration trying
to rescue its flagging legitimacy in the face of constant reminders of its
inability to protect its citizenry. It is also, however, deeply misleading.

The President appears to
conflate the twin evils of ideologically driven terrorism and violent crime and
to view both through the prism of the former. “Terrorism and violent crime are
grave threats to our nation,” he avers and then goes on to declare that “we are
in a war against terrorists in and outside our country.”

But terrorism does not
explain why our women are afraid to walk the streets or ride in public transports
for fear of being stripped and sexually assaulted by mobs of men. Or why the poachers
exterminating the country’s wildlife are accorded government protection. It
does not tell us why Kenya is rapidly becoming a hub for illicit money and
illegal drugs, why inter-communal violence rages across the land and, perhaps most pertinently, why security agencies are unable to respond to timely intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks.

The fact is, his declaration
of the War on Terror disguises and distracts from a broader and far more
consequential breakdown in the country’s security system. It is this breakdown, not our democratic space as some have suggested, that the terrorists are exploiting. According to 2013 police statistics, the same ones the government uses to insist that crime rates
have dropped by 8 percent, violent crime, including robberies, rapes and
homicides, is actually significantly higher. However, the real story is the one
that the statistics don’t tell. According to one survey, over 60 percent of crimes are not reported to the police, so their
numbers probably severely understate the problem. Worse, police officers and security agents are regularly implicated in these crimes. Who can forget the scenes of looting at the Westgate Mall or the vandalised ATM's at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport following the fire?

Restoring the integrity of
the security system is the most important challenge facing Kenyans and this
will not be achieved by bombing Al Shabaab to smithereens. Neither is the
departure of ole Lenku and Kimaiyo, while welcome, a panacea for endemic
problems. In fact, it has proven that the Jubilee administration is amenable to
public pressure and this must be kept up to ensure that comprehensive reform of
the security sector is not swept under the War on Terror carpet.